There is not much overlap in the group of passengers who have CLEAR and those who fly out of Orlando on a Sunday. While I often don’t save much time with CLEAR, it was wonderful to have the other day.
Southwest Airlines may have made a big mistake firing its skycaps and outsourcing curbside check-in. They’re saving money on labor, but they’re probably losing quite a bit of bag fee revenue, at least if my experiences are any indication.
Curbside check-in staff are now low wage. They work for tips. And they seem to have a lot of leeway in the system over how they classify a bag (charged or not, overweight or not). It’s cheaper to tip curbside than to pay for a checked bag inside.
Meanwhile, Southwest’s wifi was industry worst. Free wifi on my last couple of flights has been even worse than usual, with more people trying to use the system. There have been periods where I could not use it at all. Still, the efforts at wifi Southwest have been made are appreciated because I expected the service to be even worse.
Meanwhile I’d note that Southwest seats are uncomfortable, in much the way I find United’s coach seats uncomfortable. I miss the old tan seats.
If there’s one positive about Southwest’s changes coming to seating it’s that we’ll stop seeing the Noah’s Ark and wheelchair brigade of perfectly healthy passengers boarding early to capture all the best seats.
It used to make sense to play games to avoid having a passenger seated next to you. That ends in January, but now it makes snese to play games to avoid bag fees. It’s a whole different Southwest Airlinex experience.
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